UPDATED: Parliamentary Speaker Mick Atkinson has released CCTV footage to support his claim that a member of the Save The Repat protest “pissed” in front of Parliament House.

Organisers of the ongoing sit-in on parliament’s front steps have described the Speaker’s accusation as “tommy-rot and claptrap”.

The demonstration was organised by former military medic Augustinus Krikke to oppose the Government’s planned closure of the Repatriation General Hospital, with the facilities to be turned over to the private sector for health and public housing projects.

A vocal band of protestors have camped out on parliament’s doorstep for the past 51 days, racking up a claimed 82,000 signatures in support.

But the Speaker, who initially granted them permission to sleep beneath the cloisters, says his patience is being tested by frequent liberties, including breaches of personal hygiene and public decorum.

“We have video of them pissing in the front of Parliament House in daylight hours,” he told InDaily. He has now made the footage publicly available (see below).

“They’ve tried to reserve for themselves parking spaces on North Terrace; they’ve brought witches’ hats and put them out,” Atkinson continued.

“They don’t have permission to park there (and) it creates difficulty with traffic turning left out of North Terrace.”

Krikke says the claim of public urination is “absolute tommy-rot and claptrap”.

“I refute that,” he said.

“There was an incident of somebody going into the bushes, a passerby, but our people chased them off.”

Krikke says there was a pungent “stench of urine from before we got here”, and the protestors have used deodoriser “to get rid of it”.

He says the witches’ hats were to reserve space for the delivery of hot food during peak hour traffic, but the delivery times had since been postponed till 8pm.

“We’ve done everything possible to accede to (the Speaker’s) wishes,” he said.

“He’s clutching at straws.”

Atkinson also argues that “only a tiny number of (the protestors) are veterans”.

“The great majority of them have no military service at all, so there’s some passing off going on,” he said.

Atkinson says there “comes a point where the entire population of the state has passed (Parliament House) and been beseeched to sign or nor sign their petition”.

“There comes a point where no-one new is seeing them or hearing them,” he said, suggesting the protest has run its course.

He won’t speculate on whether he will relinquish permission to camp on the steps, but says the protestors need to “start living up to their undertakings to me, and respect the fabric of the building and keep it nice”.

But Krikke says they’re going nowhere, with or without parliamentary consent, until the Repat decision is reversed.

“We may have made our point but we’re here till such time as the Government changes its decision to close the Repat,” he said.

And if it doesn’t?

“We’ll stay,” he said.

“We’ll stay as long as it takes … we have an agenda till the end of August; if it takes longer, we’ll go longer.”

Krikke says he “never claimed we were all veterans”.

“We’re veterans, families and supporters (and) all my correspondence to (Atkinson) has stated that.”

When InDaily spoke to Krikke at 9am this morning there were four protestors present, of which two were veterans, one a veteran’s son and one a supporter.

Atkinson has suggested some protestors have also pushed an agenda against the Government’s anti-association laws, but Krikke argues he has supporters who belong to motorcycle clubs, stemming from his own days as an official with the Northern Districts’ chapter of the Vietnam Veterans’ Motorcycle Club.

“If riding motorcycles is a crime show me where it is in the statute book,” he said.

However, he concedes “I’ve had a couple of what are deemed to be outlaw clubs (come) to sign the petition”.

“I absolutely guarantee that they have not been involved in the protests,” he said, but refused to identify to which club they belonged because “I’m not going to put them on the spot”.

Some protestors had their names taken by police in Rundle Mall yesterday, but Krikke says that was over a misunderstanding about where they were using a megaphone.

“We’ve had people using a megaphone to get the message across when the PA system is not here, and it’s loud, and it’s noisy but it’s a free country,” he said.